Meteor Offers Insight Into Solar System

Meteor Offers Insight Into Solar System

An exploding meteor that blasted its fragments across California’s Gold Country in April has revealed rare evidence of its origin in a single family of asteroids hundreds of millions of miles from Earth, astronomers report.

Seventy-seven bits of space debris collected around Sutter’s Mill in El Dorado County, where they fell on April 22, have given scientists an opportunity for new insights into the origins of the solar system and to study space objects that hold organic chemicals of the kind contained in living organisms. Among its organic compounds, the analysts determined, are the amino acids familiar to every high school student, such as alanine and glycine, as well other fatty acids such as butyric acid and caproic acid.